


Clark Kent: Supervillain At Large

by Eager_Question



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, I swear it's not shipping though, You won't believe it's not shipping!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eager_Question/pseuds/Eager_Question
Summary: Reddit Writing Prompt: In your years at the Daily Planet, you've kept an eye on Clark Kent. He's clearly putting on the whole "dweebish coward" persona, he has a bunch of mysterious sources and he vanishes whenever Superman shows up. It's obvious. He's a supervillain, and you're going to find proof.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	1. Preliminary information gathering.

"So hey, Clark," I started, "wanna hang out at your place this week?"

He looked surprised. "Oh um, geez Vanessa, I--I don't know..." he ran a hand through his hair in an adorably dorky way that I was _not having._

"What if I buy you dinner first?" I asked with a smirk, leaning over his desk. There's a reason I always get the last-minute TV spots.

He swallowed, and blushed, struggling to look only in the range of my face, and _really_ Kent? Really? Did he genuinely think I would buy that kind of awkwardness from someone so _chiseled?_ It was not hard to see it, even with the baggy shirts and the ill-fitting jackets, it was not actually hard to know that under that blazer lay a ton of muscle. Because he was a supervillain. I still wasn't sure which one. Someone clever enough to have a whole "dweebish coward" persona probably didn't get caught very often.

He either got bitten by a radioactive gym rat or he saw plenty of people wearing a lot fewer clothes than I did on a daily basis. I wasn't buying it, but he didn't drop the act. You gotta admire that kind of commitment. I didn't move. I didn't scoff, I didn't roll my eyes, I didn't do any of the things that most of the women who hit on Clark Kent did, after he provided them with his best impression of a computer that had recently received water damage. None of the turnoffs were going to distract me.

I waited out the stuttering, and the pulling on his collar, and the looking away, and the adjusting of his glasses, and I had enough patience left over that I think the act was starting to crack when he said "I--I thought you were with Selena."

"Oh, that's over," I said as sensually as I possibly could, thanking two years of acting classes before I decided to switch to a _slightly less hopeless_ career, "I've been thinking about giving men a shot again, you know?"

I played with my hair. He swallowed again. "What about--what about--I um--place--yours?"

"Oh, I haven't cleaned up in _forever_ ," I said with a little laugh and a tilt of my head and come on, Kent, _what are you ace or something?_ "It's not... _suitable for company_."

His eyes grew and I swear I could see him considering it. I'd go to his place, and I would find _evidence_. Finally. And then I would be a hero, and I'd get an exclusive with the Justice League, and maybe even a _fucking raise_ for spotting the secret supervillain hiding under everyone's nose.

"And--and you want to buy me dinner?"

"Mmmhmm," I said with a smile. "I'm a strong independent woman, I can pay for dinner." After all, I often paid for my sources' meals. This was just... a source with extra steps.

He gave me a small nod. "Um, I--Okay, okay um, I would like that," he said. His voice half an octave higher than would be reasonable given his usual cadence. I gave him a grin and decided to leave while I was ahead. I stopped leaning on his desk, and he was startled as more of my figure entered his field of vision.

"Meet Saturday at Giulia's?"

"Uh huh," he said, then shook himself. "Um, yeah, Giulia's. Seven?"

"Let's make it eight," I said, and decided to get my things and leave for the day. I had plans to make.

There are a lot of very cheap things that fit in a purse which are very useful in an investigation. A blacklight, of course. Magnifying glasses have become obsolete, but magnifying lenses to add to one's phone have not. A small, cheap, muted flip-phone to use as an improvised bug. Tweezers, a key-copying kit, and a bit of powder and tape for emergency dusting for prints (the first and third of those can be hidden as part of a makeup kit). Usually, you don't need to dust for prints but... sometimes the need arises.

There are other things (sewing kits are far more useful than given credit for, and you should never go anywhere without some pepper spray as a woman in the big city), but they were already in my purse, and so I didn't need to go get them and make sure to hide them in the pockets such that a simple slip or asking him to get something from it wouldn't arise suspicion.

I worked out every day that week, and starved myself almost all of Friday. I got my hair and my nails done the day of, to have them fresh and beautiful. And I spent a full hour on making understated makeup perfect. By the time I was waiting for him at Giulia's, I looked like a beautiful actress pretending to be an average-looking woman in a film directed by a man who hadn't seen an average-looking woman since he moved to Los Angeles. I smelled like a stroll through an orchard that only exists in the imaginations of French writers. Everything was going according to plan.

He showed up five minutes early, which was nice though I'd been there for ten already. He cleaned up well enough, though the hunching over and the stammering remained as he said hi, and we were led to our table.

"So Clark," I asked with a smile. "Tell me about yourself." _And please phrase your answer in the form of a confession to supervillainy,_ I didn't say, though I wanted to.

"Oh, well, I um... You know I only started at the Planet a couple years ago," he said. "I'm originally from Smalville, Kansas," a ridiculous lie if there ever was any. I mean, what kind of town name even _is_ "Smallville"? Might as well be from Minitown, Missouri. It's like he came out of an apple pie fully grown and ready to feed hay to horses. "I um, I really like Metropolis."

"What are your hobbies?" Arson? Mayhem? Bank robbery? No, too pedestrian. Nobody has this elaborate a long con for something as plain as a bank robbery.

"I, um, I read books..." he said, and I realized then just how exhausting this undercover mission was going to be. 'I like books'? We were both reporters, for Pete's sake, it would be comical if we didn't read. 'Books'. What, was he going to tell me he also ate 'food'?

"What kind of books?" I asked, and he looked aside nervously because he was clearly already too committed to the act, even with a proper dress shirt and a nice jacket making it all the more unrealistic. He would have been gorgeous if he stood up straight and smiled in a less dorky fashion every once in a while. Were there any supervillains whose beauty was like, a _thing_? Male ones? I filed that in my head for later reference. I still had no clue who he was. Maybe he was with Intergang?

"Um, well I--I like um, I read science um..."

Most people are sufficiently self-centered that asking them about themselves is a good way to stop having to use your own mouth for a good long while. Clark Kent had mastered the art of not being like that, in the most frustrating of possible ways.

"Science fiction?"

"Yes, like um, Doctorow, um..."

"Like Cory Doctorow, of Little Brother and Walkaway fame?" I asked, trying to get the words out of his mouth to speed up the exhaustingly slow interaction.

"Uh huh," he said with a nod. "I really like, um... his new book is about uh..."

It was the longest "date" I was ever on. But I was determined. I would not spend that night at my place, and I would find _some_ sort of evidence.


	2. Step One? Check.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm just trying to keep updating stuff, dude.

I ordered a chicken alfredo and he ordered spaghetti bolognese because (I am serious here) he didn't recognize anything else on the menu. I swear I'm not a foodie but _come on._ I also asked for some rum, but he requested only a coke. I was going to get something non-alcoholic originally but I didn't think I could make it the whole night through without a little liquid patience.

And so it was that for the next hour, I just... put up with his inane stammers. It became something of an acting game. I was playing the part of the beautiful woman inexplicably enamoured with a boring idiot (his columns were okay, maybe if he read one of his columns out loud he'd be less exhausting...?), and each long silence was an opportunity to interpret what he said in the nicest way possible, or complete the phrases he left only half-said. Careful not to oversell it, but... at least sell it a little.

All the while I asked for little details about him. I got nothing but scraps of information, it was like interviewing a politician. Or a lawyer. Which is really the same thing nowadays, isn't it? Which is why it occurred to me to use the trick I use on lawyers. Get them to forget they were talking about themselves. Parents are a hot button issue for most people, either because they're dead or because they're not.

"So, Smallville, eh?"

He smiled. "Yes, um, it's in Kansas, it--um..."

"Looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, I imagine," I said with a smirk. "Do your parents still live there?"

His eyes lit up. "They do," he said. "They live on a farm. They don't really work there anymore, so they mostly rent out different tools or hold fairs. Just last week..."

Just like magic, that fucking stutter was gone. I had him. On and on he went, and I smiled knowing my phone was picking up every second of it. He loved talking about his parents in an endearing kind of way, and to be honest I learned more about Jonathan and Martha Kent that evening than I did about the man himself. She liked to sew and embroider, and was elevating the artform ever since he'd made her an Instagram account. He liked to fish (really. Stock Father Figure much?) and to cook, and had once won the prize for Best Burger in Smallville at a fair ("the secret is egg whites," Clark told me, with such a conspiratory gleam in his eye that I might even have believed it was true). The last half hour of the date made the first hour worth it, because his tongue had loosened, and he even began flirting back, making jokes, saying the whole word he had meant to say instead of trailing off.

By dessert--we shared some ice cream--I was having a halfway-decent time, and emotionally preparing myself for the disappointment that would come when I proved he was a supervillain. When the cheque arrived, he instinctively reached for his wallet, but I reminded him that I was paying and he smiled a non-sheepish, non-dweeby smile. It was nice. I had already made the mask slip.

"So," I said as I got my coat on, "your place?"

And he put right back fucking on. "Oh, um, uh, I mean--" he cleared his throat, "now?"

"We're having a good time, aren't we?" I asked, pressing my shoulder against his arm playfully.

"Well, yeah, I guess, I just, I mean, it's a little um, a little forward, if I..."

"Kent?"

"How about I just take you to your place?" he asked with a half-smile half-cringe I had gotten him to stop making when I laughed at his stupid joke about cow tipping. I pressed my lips together, trying to school my features. "You're mad," he said fearfully. "Please don't be mad--I think you're really hot--wait, should I say that, is that, um, appropriate or... "

I rose an eyebrow. "Why are you sabotaging yourself?" I asked, hoping that it sounded like a friendly kind of teasing even though I was a little done with this nonsense. "Do you want to get physical?"

He swallowed in a way that made it clear the answer was yes, but also he didn't want to say that, and didn't want to lie. I put a hand on right under his neck and damn I'd been right. Built like a tank. I gave him a little smile. "Then your place would be perfect to do that, right?"

"Uh-huh?" he mumbled, then shook himself. "I--it would it's just--I don't want to take advantage, um... you've been drinking..."

"Then we can go to your place, and watch a movie, and I can sober up," I said, and for a moment he made the perfect face. A face that said 'shit, I don't have a good excuse'. But it was done, and he ran a hand through his hair before nodding to acquiesce.

If I was a stereotypical father figure, I would make some sort of fishing and hook and wriggling victim metaphor, but you'll have to be contented with the knowledge that I knew I had him, and now he knew I had him. Which... was less than ideal (I would have preferred he remain none-the-wiser) but better than nothing. Step one? Done.


	3. Evening in.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa snoops.

Kent lived in a small, shitty apartment that must have had a ridiculously meticulous owner to look so good without any new paint or anything. Almost everything in his living room seemed pre-owned somehow (old, or worn in parts) but none of it was falling apart. I wondered idly if he was some sort of antique restoration enthusiast. Then I realized that would make him too interesting. The things weren't that old, anyhow. More something you find at a thrift store than an antique store. Maybe he was just a klutz at work and not at his own place. Maybe he didn't spend money on real furniture because he was planning something and knew he'd have to leave it behind.

He gave me a glass of water, and led me to his couch. He had a small TV connected to his laptop, and told me to pick something to watch while he got the popcorn. That I should "make myself at home."

Once we were well-settled into the couch, and courtesy dictated he be quiet throughout the film, it was not a half-bad evening at all. I chose _La Populaire_ , and unlike _some people_ , Kent was delighted by watching a French romantic comedy. He offered me his bed, and I declined, but he still let me sleep on his couch, and was a complete gentleman. He snored like an ox.

I love spying on men who snore, because they come with a built-in warning system. I'm always on edge when snooping in on silent sleepers. Once I was confident he wouldn't wake up, I got off the couch and got out my blacklight.

Nothing.

Literally nothing.

Not even the evidence of ketchup stains on the kitchen floor.

This wasn't possible. It was a rental. Kent had only been in the city for what, one and a half years? And he'd never moved, in that whole time. If not _his_ stains, there would have been _something_ from the previous tenant, unless they industrially cleaned the place. And... Well, it was in a dump, I really doubted that the landlord would do such a thing.

So it had to be Kent who'd done it. And... he wasn't exactly the germaphobe type. Why would he go through the trouble?

I found his keys hanging from a hook near the door, and tried to see if there was anything interesting about them. There were three keys. And judging by how old one of them was, and how small another one was, and how two of them had the same number on one side... they were probably one for this apartment, one for the mail, and one for his family home in Kansas. His keyring wasn't even interesting.

I looked through his mail, and found myself astonished at how boring it was. Coupons, coupons, more coupons, a post card from his parents (which was exactly as innocuous as it seemed at first), who had recently visited Yellowstone National Park. I sat back down on the couch feeling defeated. What else? Maybe I could try to hack into his phone, but that kind of thing usually took time.

Then I heard a gust of wind, and noticed something. The snoring sound was looping. The loop was long--long enough I hadn't noticed up until that point--but it was definitely a loop.

Pepper-spray in hand, I carefully made my way over to Kent's room. He'd closed--but not locked--the door, and I opened it as slowly and quietly as I could. I poked my head into the room, and immediately I noticed two things: First, I noticed that the shape in the bed wasn't breathing. Second, I noticed that the snoring loop was coming out of a speaker.

The window was open, the curtains flowing in the wind, and as I came into the room I confirmed my suspicion. Kent was nowhere to be found.

 _Dammit, Kent_ , I thought. _Where are you disappearing off to, in the middle of the night, so quietly?_ , and _how_ ?

I checked my phone. There was an alert up about the National Bank. Someone had tipped the police about Intergang attempting a bank robbery a few minutes back. Lane had already called dibs on it.

One point for the Intergang hypothesis.

I groaned as I realized there was nothing else for me to do, and got back on the couch, curled up in the blanket he'd given me. After a while, sleep just kind of snuck up on me.

I woke up to the smell of biscuits and gravy. Kent was making breakfast, and it even smelled _good_.

"Good morning, Vanessa," he said with a smile, serving scrambled eggs beside the biscuits and gravy on one plate, then on the other, and bringing both plates to the living room table beside the couch. "I hope you like this, I didn't really have the ingredients for anything more extravagant."

I had a bite, and he must have seen my delight in my face, because he grinned.

"They're good!" I said after swallowing.

"Thanks," he said, still grinning, "I um, uh, sorry about last night. I was very nervous. I... I'll make it up to you."

I smirked, "Oh, you will, will you?"

"Yes," he said. "How about... another date. Next Saturday. If you'll have me, of course."

I chuckled, "well, with smooth-talking like that..."

He ran a hand through his hair, looking at me with a goofy country-boy smile. He'd perfected the act, it seemed, but I could see through it. He'd gone off to do something last night. It wasn't the kind of evidence I could take to Perry (yet!) but it was _evidence_. That farmboy charm was hiding a conniving, secretive mind.

"So, what are you thinking?" I asked, and took another bite of breakfast. It was _good_.

He smirked, letting a little mischief shine through, "a surprise," he said. "I'll tell you on the Saturday."

I gave him a small nod, "alright, Kent. I'm curious now. Saturday it is." 


	4. Accumulating Evidence.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things continue to happen. I will write something better later.

I had a really nice Sunday. Spent the whole time relaxing, eating strawberries and grapes while watching old episodes of Coupling--I suppose every episode of Coupling is old now. Where does the time go?

On Monday, Lois Lane had a new project, and she wouldn't shut the fuck up about it.

"Nobody knows who he was," she told me as I was making coffee. "A new villain. He wears a two-toned mask, orange and black. Could jump around like an olympic gymnast. Superman stopped him, but one of my sources said that she thought she saw _Batman_ there. All the way in Metropolis! Can you believe it, Vanessa?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked, because I had a very strict work-life balance and had not read anything about the news over the weekend. "Did something blow up or..? What happened with the National Bank, anyway? I know you called dibs on that."

She scoffed, "it was just an Intergang attack, so passé. I think that this new villain was using it as a distraction. Else, how come they attacked within mere minutes of each other?"

"Attacked what?"

"The Steelworks lab," she said, sounding incredibly excited, as was usual for Lois whenever something terrible but newsworthy happened. "Between eleven and one in the morning." 

"...Saturday night?"

She nodded. "Yup. Superman showed up pretty fast, but this new villain managed to get out anyway, by endangering some of the scientists with one of their research projects. They're still trying to figure out what he wanted to do there, and my money's on stealing something important. But Dr. Irons was very hush-hush about the whole thing, wouldn't give me the time of day or let any of his employers do it, either. I convinced Ron to follow up on the National Bank today, while I'll be looking into Steelworks' public financial statements."

She looked at me with a giddy smile, then gave me a wink and headed over to her desk. Lane always got like this when there was a good story to be told, and she could smell good stories from further away than an elephant could smell water. 

That's twelve miles, by the way. Did I mention I cover science? 

Everyone always looks at me and assumes I'm just another Cat Grant. Of course, that's part of the point, it lowers people's guard, but it does get old. Probably the reason why Grant is covering the National Bank now. Being pigeonholed is exhausting.

Except for Kent, I guess. He seems to enjoy it. Probably for the same reason I sought it out. It lowers people's guard.

I wandered over to his desk with my new cup of coffee and gave him a smile. He stammered, as always, but I was starting to like that. His little act told me when his guard was up, which conversely, helped me tell when it wasn't. 

The week wasn't exactly uneventful--there was another attack on the Steelworks lab, and Lois was there just in time to almost get herself murdered again--but it didn't have anything too noteworthy happen with regards to my _Clark Kent: Supervillain At Large_ investigation.

Then the Saturday came. 

When Kent told me to meet him at the beach, I figured we'd be having a picnic. I was actually looking forward to it, and brought a small bottle of rum in my purse for the occasion. But instead of a blanket and a basket, I arrived at the beach to find Kent on a boat with a tall, handsome, blonde man.

"Vanessa," he said with a smile, and I will add, no stammer. "This is Arthur. Arthur is um, he's a... he's an old friend," the stammer returned. He must have noticed me noticing its absence. He ran a hand through his hair, and I noticed how bulky the harness attaching the oxygen tank to him was, with what looked like a lot of unnecessary belts and buckles. Probably still trying to hide the fact that he had the body of a professional crossfit instructor. It was largely in vain. 

"Oh, I see," I said. "So we're going diving?"  
  
"Yes," he said with that goofy smile. "We have a few suits for women and--and you can change inside the boat. Arthur told me there's a really nice, um, a really nice artificial reef nearby, and--I mean--I know you care about that, since you did that piece on marine conservation efforts on in the region, and--um--uh..."

It was a little strange and dissonant to see him do something so amazing and thoughtful, and yet lay on the act on top of it so thickly. I decided to go with it and smiled brightly. It _was_ the most thoughtful date anybody had taken me on, after all. 

"It sounds _amazing_ ," I said with a grin, "let's go!"

He moved to get off the boat to help me in, but I was too quick climbing inside. His friend smiled, and said he looked forward to teaching me how to dive, and we began to sail away. One of the suits inside the cabin fit me well, and I came out ready to have a magical afternoon. I should have been more suspicious at the time, of course, but it just seemed like a very nice gesture, and I thought he was trying to lull me into a false sense of security, not exploiting one that was already there.


	5. The Second Date.

It didn't take long for us to arrive at the pile of sand that barely surfaced above the water a few miles off the coast of Metropolis. Four years earlier, it had been deemed sufficiently fertile ground for an artificial reef, and four months before our date, I had written a long piece on the subject and its implications for the fishing industry. Arthur maneuvered the small, beaten-down, cozy little sailboat like a pro, and I wondered idly if he was in on Clark's secrets. How did a farmboy from Kansas meet a professional sailor? 

Another boat approached the same area. It made Arthur's boat look like a wayward child in a rich man's lawn. There were no scratches on its paint, no chinks on its rails and, I would discover later, no persistent fishy smell. It was an ostentatious display of wealth so vast I idly wondered if they would try to pay us off in order to make certain they had control over their view. 

For the first few minutes, everything was fine. I got my gear on (Clark was already wearing his), and Arthur gave us a few instructions. Flip backwards into the water, not forwards, be careful what you touch, don't go up too fast, and so on. Basic stuff. I'd already dived into the area before, when researching the article, but it had been an efficient and frustrating affair mostly for the benefit of Jimmy, who got to take pictures of everything while I was underwater for maybe twenty whole minutes. 

This time, I got to _explore_.

For a whole hour, I swam around in delight. Clark followed me, pointed to certain things, and we communicated in a surprisingly successful kind of gesturing. Neither of us was particularly fluent in sign language, but that didn't matter. I thought it was a fantastic date. I thought Clark had dropped at least a little bit of the act, because I had succeeded in ingratiating myself to him. I was swimming and smiling and staying pleasantly close to him.

That's when the enormous sea-monster attacked. 

You'd think it would be an octopus. That's the archetypal sea-monster. Or maybe a squid. Something tentacled, rising from beneath to grip us. Instead, it was some sort of arthropod. It looked like the very, very pointy and spiny answer to the question "what if crabs could be tarantulas?" Afterwards, as I was nursing my bruised ribs, I found out that its closest non-monster relative was the deep sea king crab.

Clark saw it first, its enormous shape nearing the reef. He grabbed me by the arm and guided me up with a speed I thought was reserved for Olympic swimmers. He rushed into the boat, while I took a little longer climbing up the ladder. I felt dizzy. I wanted to puke. 

I collapsed on one of the seats while Clark talked to Arthur. My head and shoulders and arms all kind of hurt. After what felt like an eternity, Clark came back, checking on me.

"Where's Arthur?" I asked, trying to get more comfortable on the seat. 

"He's sorting something out," Clark said, "do your legs hurt? Are you alright?" he asked, as if he wasn't the one who'd broken protocol about how fast to go up with his little rescue-dolphin impersonation.

I cringed and started to prop myself up but he told me to stop and brought me a blanket. My ears hurt. I don't think the blanket actually did anything. I think it was just supposed to be psychologically comforting. Then the giant crab began to climb above the surface of the water, and Aquaman arrived.

In journalistic circles, Aquaman is something of a joke. The reasons for this are plenty, the first one being that he is theoretically the king of the greatest kingdom on the planet and has somehow managed to have no political power until very recently anyway. The second being that he has in theory an army of willing sea creatures, and has yet done nothing about, if nothing else, plastic pollution. It's not that he is "less powerful" than any other hero in the Justice League. He is in fact, much, much more powerful, in many of the ways that matter to journalists. Which is why his insistence on squandering that power is so irritating. 

But I felt like shit, there was a giant crab heading for the yacht, and Aquaman seemed godsent at the time. 

To be perfectly honest, I don't much remember everything that happened. I remember that Clark and Arthur seemed to be taking turns vanishing from the boat while 'looking for something' for a while. I remember Superman arrived to help fight the crab, since apparently Aquaman's uselessness extended into his own domain of the ocean and its creatures.

I remember that, at one point, Arthur's boat was damaged. Clark grabbed me under one arm like I weighted nothing, climbed the yatch's ladder, and placed me on it "for my safety". There was a submarine with some glowing green rocks on it. Kryptonite? I was starting to get my bearings when a man wearing a two-toned orange and black mask grabbed me and threw me at the crab. 

I woke up in the hospital with Clark next to me. He looked like a nervous wreck, which meant nothing because Clark always looked like he was ten seconds away from looking like a nervous wreck. He placed a hand over mine.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, and I stared at him in confusion, trying to piece together what the fuck had happened. It was his fault, of course. He's the one who brought me on the boat, he's the one who dragged me out of the water when we were clearly not the monster's primary target. I realized in that moment what had happened. I had been put in mortal danger by two-color guy, and Superman had saved me. Then the two-color guy had escaped. I had been bait. I had been a distraction. Conveniently located within arm's reach of the villain.

The villain had used me, because I was unlikely to fight back. Because Clark had given me decompression sickness. When he'd seen the monster. It was his fault because he'd been in on it. He'd enabled it.

"Vanessa?" he asked, his voice all innocent concern. "How are you feeling? Is something wrong?"

I tried to groan and that's when I noticed the bruised ribs. They had kind of blended together in the general upper body pain before, but once salient, they would hide no longer.

"I feel like shit," I said.

"I'm sorry," he said with a cringe. "I'm so--so sorry. I didn't--If I'd known--I just--anything you want, anything you want I--I mean," he continued to stammer and it had far past gotten old.

"When can I go home?" I asked him flatly, which seemed to hurt his feelings more than any shouting might have.

"The doctor said the toxin shouldn't be causing you any more problems now, so maybe in a few minutes after they've checked on you? You had a small concussion."

"...Okay," I said.

"Do you want me to take you home? I can--"

"It's fine."

"What? Vanessa--that's not--you were just in a super fight, you could have died! I--I insist."

"...Can you bring the doctor in?"


	6. A day of rest

The doctor was clear that, despite feeling like I was dying very very slowly, I would make a full recovery and not begin dying for another several years, unless I found myself in similarly dangerous situations more often (which she could tell I didn't, from my medical history). I had two bruised ribs, one puncture wound on my arm, and another one on my lower abdomen near the bruised ribs. I convinced Clark to only get me home, and then leave, instead of trying to make me food or anything. Bruised ribs are an incredibly painful experience, especially since breathing itself becomes an agonizing endeavour, but they weren't so painful that I couldn't put leftovers in the microwave once I’d had a few pills.

It was a very long Saturday night, and I spent most of it a little loopy from the painkillers. Sunday morning was similarly terrible, not in the least because I was rudely awakened by the person responsible for my current situation. My phone rang its default little ringtone because I hadn't bothered to give Kent his own, and I had to feel around it for three whole rings before I got my hands on it.

“Vanessa, hi, I just—I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Would you like me to bring you breakfast?”

I groaned. “What the—Kent, what time is it?”

“Um. Uh. Eleven twenty-two?”

“Fuck,” I muttered. It felt like it was six in the morning. There went my circadian rhythm for the next week and a half. “Eleven?”

“Eleven twenty-two,” he repeated, and I sighed. I tried to reach my pills, which I had foolishly left on my desk and not my bedside table, only for the movement to remind me of the agonizing pain I was in, because I hadn’t taken the pills in over six hours.

“Oh goodness, are you alright?” he asked as he heard the unholy noises I made due to that revelation.

“I can’t reach my pills,” I croaked out.

“I’ll be there in no time,” he said, and hung up, like an idiot. A few minutes later, he called me again. “Um, Vanessa, could you open the door?”

It took me that long to notice he hadn’t actually been stammering. He’d just added ums at the beginning of his sentences. His mask was slipping. I groaned as I stood up.

“Don’t do it too fast!” he warned me, his voice on edge. “I read a study that apparently the brain processes pain duration differently than intensity and therefore the best way to take off a bandaid is very slowly.”

“...What?” I asked, because... what?

“I’m just trying to help,” he said, a little less on edge, and I noticed that his weird tirade had distracted me enough that I’d made it most of the way to my pills. I took two, and began walking to the door slowly, cringing while I waited for the painkillers to start killing some pain. I opened the door to find Clark in a bulky jacket, holding a paper bag on one hand, and some sort of shake on the other.

“May I come in?” he asked, and I sighed and stepped aside. “I bought you some soup, because I thought that soup is what you get for sick people, but then I realized that that’s usually for respiratory infections or stomach bugs, of which you have neither, but soup is fine anyway, I mean I like soup, except I thought that drinking soup with a spoon might actually be very uncomfortable for you because of your bruised ribs, so I thought perhaps a protein shake would be a better idea. You like blueberries, right?”

How had he known that? “Yeah, um... thanks, you can put the soup in the fridge,” I said, a little thrown off by both his ramble and thoughtfulness.

“Alright. I, um—I really am sorry for all of this,” he said. “If I’d known, I—I just want you to know that I—I never thought...” the stammer was back, though it seemed a little more sincere somehow. Maybe it hadn’t been on purpose. Or at least, my injuries hadn’t. Maybe he was just a lackey to orange-and-black mask guy. I should really read Lois’ coverage of him, surely she’d named him by now.

“Alright,” I said, “I just... need to be alone right now,” I added, and he nodded.

“Of course, of course, I don’t mean to—I mean—If you need anything, I’m one call away,” he said, and hurried out the door like an actor who’d just realized he was late for his cue to exit.

The protein shake was good, and I spent most of the Sunday holed up in the couch, consuming a variety of pain killers and muscle relaxants. The dull ache was reduced but didn’t really go away, and the boredom made me glance at Clark’s phone number a few times. I was feeling like complete shit, and Perry had already told me to take off as much time as I needed—Clark had volunteered to cover my stories—so I decided to begin writing this account, in order to keep track of what had happened thus far.

I kept thinking about the way they vanished in the boat. It was probably an artifact of my dizzy, distracted mind, but I could have sworn that Clark and Arthur had just kept tagging in and out of view. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard anything about Arthur since I woke up late Saturday afternoon. I wondered if he was also a victim of this situation, or if he’d been in on it, and that’s why he’d chosen such an old, smelly boat as the ride. Wouldn’t want to endanger anything more expensive, would we?

Later that Sunday, I decided to read Lois' take on orange-and-black guy.

> A mysterious new super-villain has arrived in Metropolis. He has the reflexes of an Olympic gymnast and the arsenal of a Doomsday prepper. He was first spotted last Saturday, attacking the newly opened Ironworks headquarters...

Blah, blah, blah, four people injured, one critically who still remained in the hospital. Blah blah blah, possible connection to Intergang. It wasn't actually a bad article, all told, but I spent most of the time I was reading it feeling frustrated by it. Then the read-more section arose, and I knew it was going to get juicier. Lois usually only went over the wordcount when she found something she needed to share.

> In researching this mysterious new villain, I have found my way into a list of Jump City's second and third rate villains. While it may sound like looking for a needle in a pile of needles, all of which are trying to be more colourful and evil than the last, I eventually got my hands on a spreadsheet being maintained by the JCPD that has them sorted by crime, real name (if known), occupation, style, and colour palette. As the work was unattributed, I would like to take a moment to commend the poor intern who had to comb through the data for weeks to compile it for my convenience.
> 
> In it I found one super villain who wore orange and black, in a bilaterally asymmetrical way, who had no clear powers other than those that could be achieved with a strict workout regimen and possibly steroids, and who had this villain's propensity for quiet, deliberate work.
> 
> His name is, apparently, Deathsroke. You can imagine my heartbreak as I found that I wouldn't get the chance to name him...

Deathstroke was apparently a mercenary named Slade Wilson, and that brought up a different question I spent the rest of that day considering: Who was paying him?


End file.
